Mushroom mania

I've been a bit obsessed about mushrooms since I discovered the ones growing in my backyard are comestible, or edible. It's easy to find them because they grow in an arc or a circle - and where they grow, the grass is slightly darker in color. Apparently, there are 60 different kinds of mushrooms that grow in this formation. The one I have is commonly known as the Scotch bonnet, or the fairy ring champignon!

The past 2 weeks, whenever we go out on walks, my eyes scan the forest floor, around tree trunks, and up into tree braches in search of wild mushrooms! In this area, there are a number of edible mushrooms you can find in the wild. My neigbor Pierre and his son have found trompettes de mort (nasty name but they are not only edible but delicious), chanterelles, fairy ring champignons (marasmius oreades), and a thick oozing mushroom called langue-de-boeuf.

Of the 3,000 or so wild mushrooms found in Europe, only a dozen are edible. Most are not edible, toxic, or deadly. Since I can only identify a few mushrooms, my expeditions so far have only been to search, admire, and photograph strange and beautiful mushrooms.

So it seems that wild mushroom picking/hunting/eating is a national obsession here in France and also in Germany, Poland, Russia and other parts of Europe. But did you know that China is the #1 exporter of mushrooms, both wild and cultured?

Here, as August creeps into September, mushroom mania is picking up steam. There'll be mushrooms fetes springing up soon. And in my town, there's a Mycologie Botanique club - I'm looking forward to learning more about the club and its activities next week at their Open House. Hoping there will be some guided mushroom walks or an expert who can help identify the ones I've found.

Observations on Me/France/Geneva, part 2

Observations about Geneva:
-GVA is a really small city but very clean and quite pretty with the lake and the mountains; it has all the amenities but just fewer of them
-Lac Leman is huge; you can waterski, jetski, boat on it
-The Jet d'eau is quite a moving monument
-I've seen more swans in Geneva than any other place
-I've met tons of people with Swiss bank accounts so it doesn't seem so special/exotic to me anymore
-The Swiss are really obnoxious/bad drivers; almost as bad as the French; they make Boston drivers look like kittens (in my honest opinion)
-GVA is ridiculously expensive compared to France (and the US). Food is expensive. Dining out is expensive. Going to the movies is expensive
-Grown men and women in business suits regularly use their scooters, or trottinettes, as a form of transportation. Even senior citizens use them here!
-Traffic is GVA is horrible. It's a medieval city with modern day traffic problems. During the first French session, R and I drove into GVA and were stuck in traffic for an hour and a half. If you want to cross from one side of GVA to the other side, you are forced to cross the Pont du Mont Blanc and therein lies the problem!
-Thankfully GVA has a great public transport system, the TPG, which is appropriately priced. It costs 3CHF to travel anywhere within the canton of Geneva for 2 hours. For 3CHF, you can take the bus, trolleybus, tram or the mouette, a ferry. Also the TPG is based on an honor system. You buy your tickets from a machine and get on the bus/tram/trolleybus. When you get on, they do not collect your tickets and you do not show them. But sometimes there are TPG agents on board who ask to see your ticket
-Despite Geneva's small size and population, it is quite international. There are more Middle Eastern people and Africans here than I noticed in Boston. Also, in Switzerland 4% of the population are Muslim. Despite the fact that many are highly educated and are working for the UN or other international organizations, head scarfs and minarets are often topics of controversy (both in Switzerland and France)
-Many Swiss rent rather than own their homes. Why? Real estate is exorbitantly expensive. If you opt to own, you can get a mortgage for 100 years!! Rent controlled or nice reasonably priced apartments are available but not openly advertised on the free market. Instead they are passed from generation to generation or from friend to friend. R knows people who work for the UN who keep their apartment in Geneva instead of releasing it even though they may have an assignment elsewhere. If you have a nice apt, you hang on it and sublet it out to a friend


Observations about France (my town in particular):
-I like having the Juras in my backyard and seeing the Alps and the Mont Blanc on a clear day. It's also nice to have several huge lakes nearby. On our evening walks or motorcycle rides, we have spotted deer, foxes, rabbits/hares, and tons of snails and limas (snails without their houses)
-Besides Paris, Lyon, and a handful of other cities, France is mostly rural and made up of small towns and villages
-It is so much quieter here; I can the crickets, bees, wasps, the winds, the cow bells
-People here really take care of their property; everyone has a nice vegetable garden and a beautifully rustic house. In my area, it seems everyone has fruit trees (both domestic and wild apples, pears, prunes, berries, figs, apricots, cherries). Also I can identify these trees now :)
-While it CAN be expensive to dine out in France, food such as bread, milk, cheese, pate is regulated and quite cheap (even compared to the US)
-There are quite a few big supermarkets in town such as Carrefour, Intermarche, Leader Price, Ed, Lidl (a German brand), Ecomarche, and more
-At the same time, you can also still find stores that specialize in one thing. For a small town, we have quite a few boulangeries, poissoneries, charcuteries, boucheries
-We have 1 MacDonalds with free and unlimited WIFI. But you're not going to find a Dunkin Donuts or CVS; but in Geneva you can find 4 Starbucks. Actually there are no real places that only sell coffee, but there are a few salon de thes where you can sit and drink tea/coffee with chocolate, small sandwiches, pastries
-I was surprised to find so many pizzarias/kebab places in France, mostly owned by Turks or other people from the Middle East. In all the markets you can find Halal meats and Middle Eastern food products
-For the French, "Oriental" is the Middle East, not the Far East
-There is an abbatoir where they butcher meat. I don't know if you can bring something you hunted for them to butcher
-Our town has a dechetterie where you can bring your paper, glass, plastics to be recycled. Other things you can recycle/trash there: anything that can be burned, tires, tv, lawn clippings, tree branches, microwaves, computers, concrete/trash from home improvement. Only thing I noticed you can't return there is motor oil, cleaners, batteries
-Our small town of 10,000 people have at least 5 pharmacies within a 10 minute walk of one another. You can easily spot the pharmacies by their flashing green cross. It's possible to get birth control without an RX because it's considered an OTC drug. If you pick mushrooms, you can bring them with their roots attached to the pharmacy. Pharmacists are trained to identify mushrooms and know which ones you can/cannot eat
-We have a few small clinics in our town but the nearest hospital is 30 mins away by car. My Japanese friend's 1 year old recently had a bladder infection with a high fever and had to be hospitalized. He's feeling much better now!
-The gens du voyage (also known as Roms, Gitans) have a huge presence in France/Switzerland. Without a permanent residence, many are unemployed and living on the fringe of society, moving from village to village in their white caravans. We have driven by these gens almost everyday - sometimes we see only a few white caravans; othertimes we have seen hundreds of them taking over an empty plot of land. Nicholas Sarkozy and his government are cracking down on the gens because they suspect them of shady activities and robberies/burglaries
-French children (at least those raised and living in the country) are very polite. Whenever we meet them on our walks, etc, they always say bonjour or whatever the appropriate greeting is

Anyways, that's it for now. I'm sure there'll be a part 2 soon.

Observations on Me/France/Geneva, part 1

It's the last weekend of August. For the French, this time marks the end of summer vacations and the return of the school year. For me, it marks 3.5 months of living in France/Switzerland. Along the way, I've been taking notes on what I've observed and learned and share it with you here:

I've always wanted to live abroad and learn a new language. I knew that moving abroad to a new country without knowing the language (and not knowing anyone but R) would be a challenge. The past few months have been great and exciting but they've also been difficult as I've had to adjust to everything I knew and took for granted in the U.S. All the same, I would not trade it for anything, as I've learned and experienced so much since moving here. For people who have moved and lived abroad, you probably understand from personal experience!

Some observations on myself:
-Without a job, I can find many ways to occupy myself but am looking forward to finding a job
-I don't know how to look for a job in Geneva; it's much harder to find a job here and I need to be more diligent and learn how to network because most jobs are not even advertised
-Besides myself and my Japanese friend, the only other Asians I've seen in town are the ones who own the Chinese/Vietnamese restaurant in the town square as well as the ones who sell nems (fried spring rolls) at the Thursday farmer's market
-For food, I'm eating WAY more bread, cheese, pate here! I'm doing more gardening and cooking. I'm doing more gathering for my food (gathering wild blackberries, mushrooms, oregano) and picking vegetables and fruit from my garden. We rarely eat out in France and Geneva compared to Boston and NYC. For instance, since arriving I've learned to make pad thai, Chinese roasted red pork, bim bim bap, zucchini lasagna, French fruit tart, this disastrous apricot/honey/olive dish, and many other things
-I've spent way less time with friends and talking to friends in Boston. And I've learned that it's important for me to have a large/wide support system
-I've had lots of more time with R and learned more about what it means to live together and compromise
-I've spent a lot of time alone as well, and with my thoughts
-I've sweated less (??) it's less muggy here compared to Boston
-I survived a summer without AC in the car and in the house (and sometimes at school); to be honest, it hasn't been the typical summer here because of all the rain but R says it's not really necessary even though it would have been nice for a few days when it was very hot
-I've helped out with more home improvement projects with R
-I watch more TV here than in France and am online less compared to when I was working
-I am way less dependent on mobile; I only use it for emergencies now. Also because we live so close to the Swiss border, and we'd need the phone more when we are working in GVA and need to call each other, we decided to get Swiss mobile service. Therefore, using the mobiles in FR means we would be roaming.

-Good habits I've formed:
-I'm less impulsive about purchase decisions; I only buy what I need or what I absolutely love. So far, that means buying whatever I want regarding food, but spending $0 on clothes, knick-knacks, movies, coffee at Starbucks, dining out. And for me, dining out is a huge pleasure. But here, I've replaced it with other things that also make me happy, like learning to cook something well
-For entertainment, I've been exploring the area and the culture; we go to the different fetes in the surrounding towns and celebrate the local traditions
-For exercise, I am living closer to nature and spending more time in nature. I've walked about the same, but I've done more hiking here than in Boston
-I'm more aware of the weather and the seasons; in the spring, we hiked and picked daffodils. In the summer, we hiked and picked berries. This month, we're picking mushrooms in our backyard and on walks, we are searching for mushrooms and take pictures of them. In the fall, there'll be more mushroom hunting, gathering wild chestnuts in the forests nearby, harvesting at the vineyards, the first taste of beaujolais and so on and so forth
-I commuted to class using public transport rather than driving; I still don't have my French license or know the French driving rules yet, so the only driving I've done is around parking lots or mostly empty business parks
-For learning, I've learned for my own pleasure - for example, learning French; learning more about mushrooms. Also, years spent learning French and Latin are not for nil. Both languages have helped me learn French!

J'ai fini mon cours aujourd'hui! Bon week-end!

Happy Friday everyone! Today was the last day of classes for UNIGE's cours d'ete. I'm both relieved and sad at the same time...it's been an intensive 9 weeks but I wouldn't have traded it for anything. I started on June 28th only knowing the present tense and now 9 weeks later, I'm really happy with the progress I've made. Petit à petit, I'm learning! I've always wanted to immerse myself in something, like learning a new language..and now I have done that and emerged with a new skill. Now that I have the basics down, I have to find someone to practice with a few times a week. Aside from the classes, I've also met some great people from all over the world...some are leaving today for home and others like me will stay in the area for work, study, etc.

For instance, today, I said goodbye to a new friend who I met in the second session but got to know better during the 3rd session. She's around my age and has been working internationally for a number of years, most recently in Southeast Asia. In between contracts, she decided to make a small tour of Europe and was hoping to find a job in the region. She decided to come to Geneva to immerse herself in the French language, a language she's studied on and off for years now. Her journey now continues onward, first to Paris for a few days and then back home to Korea where she is from. Unfortunately, a few days ago, she was robbed at Gare Cornavin, Geneva's main train station, and where I take the train everyday. Luckily she was not harmed..she hadn't even noticed that someone had taken her bag because she was a little frazzled from having had to move out of the place where she was staying earlier that day. Anyway, I know she's looking forward to going home..she said that she was tired from traveling and living out of a bag and it would be good to just stay put for a while. I was happy for her but a little sad to see her leave...perhaps because I made a connection. Or perhaps because it's dreary out now and it's almost the end of summer here. Or perhaps I detest goodbyes.

On the other hand, what's the best reward from the past 9 weeks? Understanding and being able to participate in conversation. Today, R and I decided to take a drive to the other side of "our" mountain. En route, R was curious about a huge antenna in someone's yard so we stopped to take a closer. The owner, a retired pilot, came out and struck a conversation with us about antennas and amateur radio, a topic I know nothing about. However, I was able to follow along easily because I knew both the grammar and the vocab! Yay me!!

Courtesy of Carmen and Maggie, this should make you laugh.

Lost and found

Really gorgeous weather today, warm and sunny with a bit of breeze and no humidity! Wednesdays I have a light day so I'm usually home early - today I was home by 12:30. After lunch R and I decided to spend the afternoon in Nantua, about 25 minutes away, where there's a lake next to the mountains. We laid out in the sun - I did my French homework while Richard "nerded" out with his CISCO book. He's preparing for a CISCO certification examination in a few weeks.

Returning home, we saw a cute little dog on the road leading up to our house. We stopped because he was limping. I drove the car up while R carried him up to the house so we could call the owner. When we called, the owner knew exactly where we lived and who we were..she drove up to our house while I was giving "Elco" some food! The owner was really nice and said the dog had an accident last year and since his operation, Elco has been limping but likes to travel. Apparently, Elco had seen a jogger recently and ran away with the jogger. And today, he was happy to follow us into the garden.

August 22 harvest and food, food, more food!

Yesterday was a good day. Before R and I drove to Lausanne, a French-speaking Swiss city north of Geneva, I had the best omelette I have ever had. On Friday, at R's invitation, our neighbor Pierre came over to pick the mushrooms in our backyard. And yesterday morning, his wife Denise made the omelette below using eggs from the chickens that they keep! The mushrooms were tiny, but full of flavor and this is a taste memory that will last a lifetime for me. Mmmm.


Pierre and Denise's chickens and rabbits - the eggs came from these chickens, which ones exactly, I don't know! The big breeder rabbit is going to have a new litter in a few days and I can't wait to go over there and meet the new bunnies.


It's been a strange, wet month...but now the sun is out and my garden is thriving. The past week, I've been harvesting 5 tomatoes daily; smaller in size than the ones you may find at the market, but these ones taste so much juicier and full of tomato goodness. Yesterday I harvested another monster zucchini, or courgette in French.

To combat the heat today, I decided to make something fresh and healthy using ingredients picked fresh from the garden: Vietnamese summer rolls with peanut sauce. Everything you see on the plate was picked this morning (except for the store bought red peppers and carrots): garden lettuce, mint, baby tendrils of cilantro, tomatoes, 1 lonely baby beet with beet greens, and zucchini.


With so much zucchini, I wondered what I could make. After a quick Google search, I found a great recipe for Korean zucchini pancakes, or Pa Jeon. Has anyone made these before? Looks simple enough...if only I could also have Korean BBQ and all the side dishes with it too.

Yesterday, before driving to Lausanne, R and I stopped at Mekong Market at Ferney-Voltaire so I could stock up on a few Asian staples. I got nori, pho paste, cha lua, rice flour, and tapioca starch to make Bánh Cuốn, steamed Vietnamese rice rolls with pork sausage.

I also got some nems, yellow mung mean cakes, sate paste (to make satay skewers), and a Chinese pork bun with Chinese sausage, egg, and pork in it.

And finally a view of the mountains from a skylight in my bedroom - the mountains you see are the Juras, a chain of mountains that are older than the Alps but much lower. They run from this area all the way to Basel, Switzerland, which is near Germany. I often hear and see cows grazing on grass on these meadows between our house and the mountains.

A walk through the Gorges du Fier

Spent a gorgeous afternoon at Les Gorges du Fier, close to Annecy. Walking through the narrow canyon on a small wooden footbridge, we saw the Fier river rushing through the canyon, carving the limestone rocks below into different shapes. In the rocks above, we saw beautiful faces etched there. Can you spot them?

We stopped at a Champignonerie, a cave where mushrooms are grown and sold wholesale and retail. Unfortunately, there was only a small harvest this week, so we didn't buy any shiitakes, but R played with the 8+ cats on the property.

And we couldn't pass up visiting an Ostrich farm, could we? We bought ostrich steaks and dried sausage made from you know it...ostrich. We saw precious little ostrich chicks and then their bigger mamas and papas. Ostriches are the fastest living land birds and can run up to 45miles per hour...apparently, when threatened, they can give you a fierce kick but only if you're standing in front of them. Apparently, they can only kick forwards!

Le chat sur le balcon

Over the past few weeks, R and I have made a new little friend...a feline friend who we fondly call Poubelle. In French, poubelle means trashcan..and of course, we call him that affectionately because he eats everything we give him and comes back for more!

Poubelle started coming around when we were outside barbecuing. As the meat starts to sizzle and smoke, Poubelle shows up in the garden, sitting a comfortable distance away, but looking intently in our direction. R, being a total cat person, throws him pieces of choice chicken, sausage. Poubelle lays and watches, faking his disinterest in us and the meat that R threw in his direction. But as soon as we pay no attention to him, he scampers towards the meat and snatches it away in his mouth, scurrying off to eat it under the hedge. Over the last week or so, Poubelle has taken to us, or maybe he just likes the hands that feed him.

Today, we found him sunning himself on our balcony, within 2 feet of us. When I walked out on the balcony with pieces of meat for him, he didn't run away. But he did grab it and run down the balcony stairs to eat in peace on the terrace. Within minutes, however, he re-appeared on the balcony, looking inside to see if I was going to feed him. And of course, I did...and after, R gave him some yogurt with milk. He looks well fed and happy...so I think he lives in the neighborhood and belongs to a family there..but all the same, I like that he comes by every night.


Appearing on the balcony for a bit of yum-yums. Totally ignoring the plate of yogurt that R has placed on the balcony and hoping for some more chicken or sausage. After some snacking, he sits by the mint plant on the balcony..with his back turned to us! He's getting pretty comfortable being near us now which is kind of nice.


And look what's now growing in my garden:


My courgette plant (zucchin) is prolific...I've already harvested a giant zucchini and here are 5 more that are growing quickly. Tonight's expected rain will water them even more..grow courgettes, grow!


One of my Charentais melon plants..actually the biggest one so far. It's starting to flower and soon I hope to have little baby melons to show you. When full grown, Charentais melons look like baby cantaloupes and they taste like cantaloupes too.


View of my garden...and the 9 tomato plants I have which are staked to curly metal stakes...to better keep the tomatoes off the ground so they can ripen on the vine! This week I started picking off the bright red ones and just one bite tastes like a month of summer. They are small in size but big on taste! Besides melons and courgette, the eggplants are growing well as are the beets, lettuces, pepper, and leeks. The cilantro plants are just starting to break through..yay!

Glaciers and Chamonix-Mont Blanc

On Sunday, we drove to Chamonix and....more coming soon later this week!

Fireworks over Geneva

Happy August 8th everyone! Can you believe we're already in August?

This weekend, the weather was spectacular. Sunny and warm during the days and and clear with a small breeze at night. Saturday R and I stayed close to home working on the house and running errands. Then we headed into Geneva for the best fireworks show I've ever seen. The fireworks marks the end of a month long festival in Geneva called the Fete de Geneve.

Like everyone else (and their mother), we drove into the city. Traffic was bad so we ended up parking near UNHCR and then walked a quick 15 minutes down to the lake. As we neared the lake, the neon lights from the carnival rides and food and game tents lit up the night and reflected in the lake. As we walked closer to the piers to get a good viewing spot, I could smell the food vendors' food; I could hear the thumping of the bass from the techno/house music coming from the carnival rides; and I heard many languages being spoken by all the international people who live and work in Geneva, not to mention all the happy screams I heard from people who were on the carnival rides.

Anyway, we got lucky and were able to find a place to sit on the crowded pier next to the lake an the boats docked there. We had a pretty great view of the fireworks show - and what a show it was! The show lasted an hour long and this year's theme was "Circus" so the fireworks were choreographed to "circus" music. I don't know about you..but I still love fireworks..it makes me feel all happy and full of wonder. And given all the happy applause and smiles I saw..I think everyone else present also loves them...well, everyone except for the ducks and swans swimming in the lake. When the fireworks started, the ducks all quacked loudly and frantically swam in between the boats, close to everyone sitting on their boats and on the piers. See below for my pics of the fireworks (will upload tomorrow). And here's a short clip of last night's fireworks.

Arriving home, the skies were super clear and R and I stayed outside for a few minutes just watching the stars light up the night sky here in our little part of the mountain. :)

Last week in Geneva

It's been raining all morning..torrential tropical rain. A bit weird for this area, but it's a great time to catch up on my blog and upload a few pictures from this past week.

The day after our interesting motorcycle ride up the mountain trail, I played hooky from French classes. It was a Wednesday, so I rationalized I would only be missing 2 hours of classes instead of 6 hours on any other day. R had an appt in Geneva, so I went with him and played tourist!

Here are some photos I took recently:

"Broken Chair" - is a huge wooden sculpture of a chair with only 3 legs. It stands defiantly in front of the Palais de Nations (the headquarters of the UN and General Assembly) as a reminder to visitors about the dangers and effects of landmines and cluster bombs (which are bombs dropped from the air that release smaller "bomblets" over a wide area and are costly to locate and remove): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_Chair


After R dropped me off, I decided to take a ferry ride on Lac Leman (which is what most people call Lake Geneva). With my TPG abonnement mensual, or monthly public transport pass, I can take any tram, bus, or ferry within the canton of Geneva. So, I went on my first ride on the lake, taking in beautiful views of the lake and surrounding mountains. I boarded a yellow ferry near the UN and 20 minutes later, I arrived near Baby Plage (Baby beach which is named so because it is tiny..not because there are tons of little ones sunning themselves there!). There was no one at the Beach because it started to rain hard with crazy winds. I took refuge under one of the giant white umbrellas set up for the Fete de Geneve that takes place in July and August. After the rains, I walked over to the Jet d'eau and watched people feeding the swans and birds. I guess they are used to people because they were incredibly friendly and curious, swimming very close to the boardwalk. It was so cool to see so many swans (20 or so) all together and so close too!





During class on Friday, we talked about our favorite foods, cooking, bio/organic foods, and the locavore movement in Geneva. We have 3 Koreans in my class, and quite a few people who love Korean BBQ, so we discussed it for a while. And of course, by the end of the day, I was craving some good Korean food. So like a good locavore, I picked a zucchini straight from my garden and decided to make one of my favorite Korean dishes...bim bim bap. It was YUMMY - especially with a glass of bubbly Cerdon wine we picked up a few weeks ago in Cerdon.